Blair v Warden
| Jurisdiction | Scotland |
| Judgment Date | 19 July 1898 |
| Docket Number | No. 27. |
| Date | 19 July 1898 |
| Court | High Court of Justiciary |
Lord Justice-General, Lord Adam, Lord Kinnear.
Ship—Pilot—Unqualified Pilot—Merchant Shipping Act, 1894 (57 and 58 Vict. cap. 60), secs. 586, 596, 598.—
The Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, enacts, sec. 586, subsec. 4,—‘Every qualified pilot acting beyond the limits for which he is qualified by his licence shall be considered an unqualified pilot.’
Sec. 596.—‘An unqualified pilot may, within any pilotage district, without subjecting himself or his employer to any penalty, take charge of a ship as pilot [inter alia] (a) when no qualified pilot has offered to take charge of that ship, or made a signal for that purpose.’
Sec. 598, subsec. 1,—‘If an unqualified pilot, whether within a district in which pilotage is compulsory or outside such a district, assumes or continues in the charge of a ship after a qualified pilot has offered to take charge of the ship, he shall for each offence he liahle to a fine not exceeding fifty pounds.’
Held that a pilot in charge of a coasting ship, qualified as a pilot for the first part of her voyage, did not commit an offence under sec. 598, subsec. 1, by continuing in charge of her after she had passed beyond the point to which his licence extended, although a pilot qualified for the whole voyage had offered to take charge of the ship, the offer having been made at the port from which the voyage commenced, and having been an offer to take charge of the ship for the whole voyage.
On 30th May 1898 James Boag Warden, pilot, 65 Holmseroft Street, Greenock, was charged in the Sheriff Court at Greenock on a summary complaint at the instance of Robert James Blair, Procurator-fiscal of the Lower Ward of Renfrewshire, setting forth that the accused had ‘contravened the Merchant Shipping Act, 1894, section 598, subsection 1,* in so far as having been, on 30th March 1898, as a qualified pilot, in the charge of the steamship “Castor,” of Helsingfors, from the James Watt Dock, Greenock, to the Island of Little Cumbrae, he did, on 30th and 31st March 1898 and 1st April 1898, as an unqualified pilot, assume and continue in the charge of the said steamship from the Island of Little Cumbrae to Wick, being after Archibald Gillespie Walker had, on several occasions between 24th and 30th March 1898, as a qualified pilot, offered to take charge of said steamship from the James Watt Dock to Wick aforesaid; whereby he is liable to a fine not...
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